Thinking of the "notes" section as an Inbox has really made it more appealing to capture everything in the moleskine. I start each day with a new line and keep things in chronological order. Once I process something, I mark it done using a yellow highlighter.

I rarely capture items in the Calendar section except for personal items. Work items seem to end up in Outlook without making it to pen & paper.

I do capture more Contacts than Calendar items using the moleskine. It happens mostly when I'm on travel, and capturing some new information away from my computer or cellphone.

Previous years I have not had a Projects section, but after attending a David Allen Roadmap Seminar this past summer I started doing this, and it has paid off as a good Weekly Review resource. It also turns out that at times I only have my moleskine, and I can do some productive brainstorming during downtime with just the Projects list in the moleskine.

Another item added after the Roadmap Seminar was the Roles & Responsbilities section. This is great to review from time to time during downtime, and it helps to keep perspective on what is important to me at 30,000-ft and higher levels.

Do you have any good GTD moleskine tips that I might consider? Leave a comment or drop me an email.

Comments

I go through one moleskine a quarter.
- Business card is glued on the inside front cover. $50 reward, so I must be more valuable than you. :-)
- Project list at the back
- Pocket holds GTD Next Action lists, updated in Word and printed out once a week (1 page for work, 1 page for personal)
- Company phone list in back
- Also in back is 9 months worth of calendar pages
The bulk of the planner is for daily to-do lists (only things that need to be done that day, of course), and notes. The moleskine and my blackberry is all I carry around.

I've been keeping a notepad in every bag I carry around with me. I had thought about using one of them as my main organizer but I just can't bring the same one with me everywhere I go. I either forget to bring it or lose it somewhere.

Now I just use notepads for capturing inbox items and tear strips or pages out and stick them in my pocket. I can and do carry my phone w/ me everywhere. I use Nozbe as the organizer of my mess. Most of the time, I DM a tweet to Nozbe to add notes or tasks. Sometimes I forward e-mails to Nozbe for filing at a later date.

How well does searching work with the Moleskine and other paper based systems? I've been using wikis and Basecamp/Nozbe for documenting my work and personal items because searching is easier when a computer does it.

I have a lot of pages in the back (calendar takes 2 facing pages per month), and I take a lot of notes. In some cases I could conserve paper, and go for 3-1/2 or 4 months, but a fresh book at the end of every quarter feels cleaner.

I typically only have 2 pieces of paper in the back pocket. I like to drop my moleskines on the floor so that the spine breaks and I need to tape it together. This looks as professional as it sounds, and I would love to find something Rich-proof. In any case, the back pocket is not the weakest link.

Mad Marv, I have an index at the front of each book. It lists major entries, the dates, and the page numbers. Search is much slower than on a computer, but not too bad for something I don't do all that often. In aggregate, I spend less time searching than you spend waiting for your computer to turn on to enter information. :-)

MadMarv - I understand the need to be able to write whenever ... my wallet is from Levenger and it has a small pin and note paper to use just in case I don't have my moleskine.

When I get a note - not matter where - even the moleskine - I consider that an item to be processed and I process all my work stuff into my TabletPC and my personal stuff into my Mac. On the Mac, my main tool is MindManager & Evernote, and on the PC my main tools are Outlook, MindManager, & Evernote.

I usually don't search with the moleskine ... it is just my main capture device. All my doing is actually via computer (PC if work / Mac if personal).